Hello, Need a little guidance. Im having a hard time getting the settings correct on my light objects DSP 7 upgrade I installed on my k40 laser. I etch very detailed images onto anodized aluminum. On the stock k40 M2 board I could just send the dithered image to the laser and it would etch them perfectly. I dont not use bitmap image conversion but rather dithering i create myself. Ive uploaded a few examples of the work Ive done with the stock k40 nano board. Im not getting nearly as clean of etchings using the exact same files on the dsp however and could use alittle help understanding why. What is the best way to dither an image for maximum detail for the DSP controller? Right now i use a resolution of 1000dpi. Any help is greatly appreciated.

I am a metric person so that would be something like 25/0.02. Isuspect you will find you can't get 1000 of your dots into an inch. Your steppers might not be able to increment by 1000th of an inch anyway. So, you are engraving at a resolution too high for your laser and losing money as you can get the same quality from a lower resolution and it's faster. You'll never see the difference.

Currently I suspect you are over engraving. Think of trying to draw a picture with your finger in lines by putting some ink on your finger and drawing a 1000 lines in an inch. You will get over lap.

Apparently our self build lasers max out on resolution at around 400- 500 dpi ( I am not sure of the truth in this )

Once you have worked out your maximum resolution do all the above and...

Change the scan gap as close you can to match the maximum resultion your laser can do.

For instance if your laser dot size max resolution is 172 dpi use the scan gap for 175 dpi.

Before you do this you might want to make a small black box bitmap and engrave at a really wide scan gap so you can see the lines.

If they don't match up you need measure the difference go into the settings and adjust the engraving backlash offset ( I think it's called that )

try engraving again.

This page is great for explaining this it appears to be down at the moment tho!

If you put the bed closer to the lens without getting a lens with a smaller focal point the opposite of what you think will happen will happen.

The dot size will be larger.

If you cut a cross section through a laser beam it looks like a sand timer. First it's large, then is small at the focal point for a certain depth, then it gets large again. Currently you are in the small, sweet spot. Moving the label up moves it into the large zone. Moving it too far down does this too.